It's not what you've done, it's what you've done lately.

And lately, I haven't reached all the goals I had set for myself in 2016. I missed out on a full year of playing shows, which had been immensely therapeutic for me during the last few years. I completely failed myself out of a full year of that and there's been days that has gotten to me.

My counter weight however was my biggest goal of 2016, audio production. This probably was the thing that kept me most sane throughout the year. I spent a ton of time and money on gear and online school and as much as I'm happy where I'm currently at, I'm absolutely nowhere near where I would like to be. But I started and am still proceeding, and that was the goal.

I bought a car and was offered an awesome full time job as a digital developer. I was always told that I'd never get a good job or at least a job I liked without enrolling into college. College wasn't for me, so I simply decided against it. But while I was failing a lot of my classes in high school, I was also teaching myself a skill that intrigue me, a potential six figure skill. I would literally bring my MacBook Pro into class and write code instead of doing bellringers, geek over well-known web developers that would follow me back on Twitter, and work on an app that students could use to help submit their current events. I'm not making six figures, but I'm making more money then I was told I would without college. I somehow pulled a hail Mary in high school and ended up in 2016 being overly grateful for the opportunities to use my skills for some companies I never thought I would write code for. But I don't want to be someone who pulls hail Marys throughout life. It's not always a good feeling.

Another thing I failed at is finishing the iOS version of Closures and pushing it to the App Store in 2016. For months now, I've been teaching myself Swift, a coding language build on top of Objective-C that's used to make iOS apps. The idea of how the code works is straight forward but it is absolutely backwards syntax to any code I've work on before. I've rewritten Closures like 15 times in Swift because I wasn't satisfied in the build quality or the way users had to interact with it. At this point, if I finish it up before it's useless for people to benefit from this winter, I'll be super happy. Finding time to work on it can be challenging as I treat it as a side project. Another hail Mary. Damn it. I did however release the web version of it at closures.co for anyone to use.

Main goals for 2017, without a doubt, 100% going to happen, is the release of Anchoria's full length, and the start of finally playing shows. Nathan, Timothy and I have a better, and much clearer plan now than before and we're stoked for what opportunities will bring to this band. All the song's demos are so close to being done, it's nuts. We’ve written stuff we never thought we’d write. Tracking and mixing the actual record is going to be a blast with these guys. 2016 was the most we've all challenged each other in anything we've done musically. I purchased a new drum set and began to write our songs on drums for the album and am currently learning them fully for when we play live. I'm planning to also move out of my parents house, it's probably time. I guess they can't handle the drumming...

2016 brought me closer to my friends. I watched Timothy, one of my best friends get married, the first time I've been to a wedding since I was 6 or 7. Snapchatting Nasty Nate to my story all year, with no regrets. I got to help set up a reunion show from the ground up with Ronnie, which I look forward to helping out again this year. And all the countless times going to The Flashback Lounge and hanging with everyone during taco and wing nights.

2016 was a little bit more nuts for everyone it seems. Those years suck but there's always something to take from them. Cheers to 2017. Let's all be happy.